Azores. Visiting Santa Maria, Sao Miguel

From Madeira to Santa Maria

Our trip from Calheta/Madeira to Santa Maria was rather uneventfull. We had some good sailing winds the first 24 hours. The wind slacked off for the next 48 hours and we motored to keep up speed. The last day the wind picked up and we had a great sail into the harbour in the town of Vila do Porto located on the SW side of the island. We were called by a french boat who needed assistance as their engine wouldn't start. We managed to get help via the bar in the Sailclub and they were towed in the last few 100 meters. We had some cold beers at the sailclub later on an thanked them for helping. 

Sail Club at Vila Do Porto

 

There was a great car rental on the island. We hired a nice Citroen C3 for one day paying just 27 Euro all inclusive (minus petrol). 

Our rental car.

 We had a great trip around the island. The island is very green and there were many pictoresque small vallies and comunities with old houses/farmhouses. Many of them abandoned, years ago. 

 

Overlooking the harbour/marina was a small fort dating back a few hundred years. The island had been attacked by pirates multiple times since they were populated and the locals had endured a lot of misery. 

The old fort overlooking the marina

  Today it is a very modern community. Modern shops, roads narrow but in good order and they also have a great airport with dayli flights to the other islands in the Azores. They also have flight to Lisboa. 

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Lighthouse in the southeast of Santa Maria

 After 4 days - it was time to push on to our next destination - Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel. We left first thing in the morning accompanied by 3 other boats. 2 French and one German. The voyage was just 55 nm and we arrived just before 7PM the same day. We moored in what they still call the new marina. (built 13 years ago). The marina is at the city center. But it is quite open to winds and sea/swell from the south. We had a few very rough days where the boat really bounced around in the berth. We also used the oprtunity to take a couple of days of luxury, threating ourselves to 2 nights at a hotel. We always try to get a room with a bath tub. Grete find a soothing warm bath heavenly for her troubled back. We were recommended a good local restaurant by some Norwegians we met in the marina. Not a big succsess. The sacond nite we went to a better one next to our hotel and had a 3 couse meal. Very nice. We wanted to visit a botanic garden we found on GoogleMaps. When we entered we were briskly stopped by a plain security guard who informed us you needed a permit to enter and we were given a map of where we could go. We had to strictly follow the track on the map. Turns out this was a garden surrounding the presidency of the Azores - and not the botanic garden we had ment to visit. So much for using GoogleMaps ;) 

 While in Ponta Delgada Geir received a Distress call on the shortwave radio. It came from a Hong Kong registred bulk carrier and who had lost a man overboard. It turned out they had sent  the wrong position in their call. They had written 88 degrees EAST - which we found was inland in Bangla Desh.

This was the distress call.

Here is the vessel.

 Checking the vesseles MMSI number showed the correct position to be 100 miles south of New Orleans. We phoned the US Coastguard who again phoned the vessel by satphone. They confirmed the distress situation. We later learned the man had been found by coastguard helicopter and rescued.